Defense

  • Less training and less tools. That's one of the major concerns for DoD if lawmakers are not successful in the next few months developing a substitute to a deficit-reduction plan that calls for across the board Pentagon cuts. White House's acting budget chief, Jeff Zients told the House Armed Services Committee, "Sequestration" is not the responsible way for our nation to achieve deficit reduction." A politically polarizing issue, a compromise doesn't seem likely before the election.

    August 03, 2012
  • Department says 99 percent of laptops now are encrypted. Of the 21 laptops reported stolen or missing in the last two months, all were secured with security software.

    August 03, 2012
  • A new Government Accountability Office report found that three main actors in contingency contracting — the Defense and State Departments and the U.S. Agency for International Development — will likely only implement a fraction of the recommendations set out by the Commission on Wartime Contracting. The agencies have either determined their existing policies already address the commission's concerns or they disagreed with the recommendation in the first place, GAO found.

    August 02, 2012
  • The total cost for the continuity of service contract could increase to more than $5 billion. The Navy's deadline for bids for the follow-on contract to NMCI are due Aug. 8.

    August 02, 2012
  • Solidarity is not enough. That was the message from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a joint appearance with Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta in Jerusalem. He seemingly brushed aside Panetta's guarantees that the two countries share the same goal of a non-nuclear Iran. Netanyahu said, the Iranian regime believes that the international community does not have the will to stop its nuclear program. He suggested an attack is the only way to do that. He said international economic sanctions have had no effect on Iran's nuclear program.

    August 02, 2012
  • The White House has named Erik Fanning as the new under secretary of the Air Force.

    August 02, 2012
  • Agencies should not change their spending plans for this year or next, but need to start assessing which programs would be impacted by automatic sequestration cuts if Congress doesn't cancel them, OMB acting Director Jeff Zients told Congress Wednesday.

    August 02, 2012
  • GAO highlights a need for tighter controls to fix the contracting program.

    August 02, 2012
  • Outgoing Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz, who retires in August, spoke to reporters during his last press conference at the Pentagon about the challenges facing the branch amid tensions with Congress and new geo-politics that pose security threats.

    August 01, 2012
  • This edition of On DoD focuses mostly on one bump in the road in the military-to-civilian career transition: the higher education step. When it comes to paying for college, Congress has solved that problem, at least in theory. The relatively generous Post-9/11 GI bill gives recent veterans essentially a full ride scholarship for an undergraduate degree — paying their tuition up to the rate of the most expensive public university in a veteran's home state.

    August 01, 2012
  • The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency mission is to maintain the technological superiority of the U.S. military and prevent technological surprise. So what they are planning to do now to meet that mandate is promoting research to study chatter certain groups of Internet users. They want to track how online groups evolve on certain social media sites and learn how criminal organizations and hacker collectives evolve.

    August 01, 2012
  • The developing field of using social media to gather information can provide benefits to the intelligence community, but it also involves challenges. The changing environment of open source intelligence requires agencies and companies plan their approaches carefully.

    August 01, 2012
  • Ever watch an inept team of trainees assemble then take apart an explosive device? If not, move to D.C. or watch live coverage of Congress on TV. With Congress, you get the political version which, more often than not, ends in a whimper rather than a bang, Senior Correspondent Mike Causey says.

    August 01, 2012
  • Lt. Gen. Larry Spencer was pinned with his fourth star and was officially sworn in as the Air Force's vice chief of staff. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz did the honors during a Pentagon ceremony Friday. Spencer previously served as the director of force structure, resources and assessment with the Joint Staff.

    July 31, 2012